Exploiting bug in Supermicro hardware is as easy as connecting to port 49152.

by
Anonymous Coward
in security on (#3P8)
story imageIf you're running a server on Supermicro hardware, you're operating with your pants down. That's the conclusion by security firms who warn exploiting bug in Supermicro hardware is as easy as connecting to port 49152. There are very likely at least 32,000 servers broadcast admin passwords.

Over at CARI.net security researchers explain:
On 11/7/2013, after reading a couple articles on the problems in IPMI by Rapid7's HD Moore (linked at the end), I discovered that Supermicro had created the password file PSBlock in plain text and left it open to the world on port 49152.

If you take a look at the /nv directory, you will find the file IPMIdevicedesc.xml file; a file which was already known to be downloaded via the aforementioned port. You can quite literally download the BMC password file from any UPnP enabled Supermicro motherboard running IPMI on a public interface (reference link at the bottom of this article). This is not the only file that is vulnerable to this.
Read more here.
Reply 2 comments

Well, there's your problem (Score: 1)

by fishybell@pipedot.org on 2014-06-23 04:05 (#280)

Why would I run IPMI on a public network? If work needs done remotely, that's what VPNs, etc. are for. Not only that, they shouldn't even be accessible to any user (or even super user) on any computer (desktop, server, phone, etc.) that doesn't have direct access to the IPMI network. There's a damn good reason why IPMI usually runs on it's own nic. To me, it's the holy grail of hacking targets so of course it's either locked down tight by dividing it into it's own network with strictly guarded access or it's disabled. There should never be any in-between.

Re: Well, there's your problem (Score: 2, Insightful)

by fatphil@pipedot.org on 2014-06-24 07:04 (#28Q)

For the same reason that people run phpadmin (or whatever it's called) on a public network. The number of probes to my webserver tell me that a lot of people (or at least a lot of scripted clients) expect there to be administrative tools publicly accessible.

However, it should have been obvious that there would be problems - the fact that it's called the "Intelligent" Platform Management Interface implies that there'll be something totally braindead about it or its implementation.